A global conglomerate seeking to carry out an agenda and censoring dissenting opinions, credible and conspiracy alike?
Color me surprised.
Color me surprised.
This is not at all about the freedom of YouTube, it is about suppression of dissent and really the surreptitious persecution of dissidents.
What is really going on here is no different than when any other tyrannical regime disappears people in the real world, or even when the internet cries out in pain when, e.g., China silences people online. You may think they are being sent off to post and live on the internet somewhere else, but when they leave your sight form the bubble you live in, they are only then even more persecuted and attacked on a constant basis where you aren't even paying attention and are none the wiser to what is really going on.
In the end, "i told you so" will be utterly useless and worthless when the trap snaps shut and they come after you too once they have snuffed out and silenced everyone else they don't like, because this tyrannical authoritarian mindset is never satisfied and will always actively seek out new "dissidents" to persecute and one day you will find yourself on the wrong side too. It's just a matter of time, not whether it will happen.
Really? Youtube happens to be the only platform that is restricting content? Even if that were true, the reason this matters is Youtube is a virtual monopoly when it comes to online video. Forget the technicalities. Yes, it's privately owned. Yes, there are other site. Yes, users could set up their own competing website. But, in practice, which is all that matters, Youtube is the one place people go for videos.
Right now it’s “science”. What will be the next frontier they take on a their responsibility to curate?
Maybe they’ll come for diets?
Maybe they’ll come for social behavior (so called “challenges”)
Maybe they’ll come for political beliefs…
Who knows what they will take on as their responsibility to supervise for the greater good.
I think there is a big difference between quackery and skepticism. Skepticism in moderation is a healthy habit.
When you do that, then they come for your hosting providers and payment processors.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_in_Great_Britain_during_t...
So what? Let them curate whatever they want. There are other platforms to post my video to. Hell, I can create another one. I can create 50 others. I can create a mailing list and send to everyone on it. Are we going to argue wether spam filtering is censorship too?
It's all about opting-in.
You have certain taste, go find that group or found your own.
You don't like certain groups, don't become a member of such group.
You want to have your own private invite only group, go ahead, create your own invite only group.
Flickr never achieved the prominence of FB or IG, or flash in the pan like Tumblr, but I think they built it from the ground up to provide a decent service for everyone with a light touch. For illegal stuff, yeah, you get kicked out, that's legit. Need to escalate to site admins, that's possible too but only if the group admins are acting in bad faith.
It certainly is censorship, but users opt in.
> There are other platforms to post my video to. Hell, I can create another one. I can create 50 others.
Its not just YouTube. Its their platform, and your hosting provider, and your DNS provider, and your payment processor, and your bank. Consider what happened to Parler.
Lets not cheer on the loss of a public good because we could theoretically replace it some day.
What if one day FB is under investigation and FB decides it will only carry FB propaganda and not let any dissenting voices, would that be totally cool?
Social Justice. Your very existence as part of society affects others, therefore anything that you say or think must conform to the standards of Social Justice the Platform has deemed necessary. If you don't like it, go found your own Platform.
Being an anti-vaxxer isn't a protected class.
I'd say yes, this is why. I think that since the FAANG's are so successful that they replaced the public square with themselves, they should have to preserve the freedom of speech just like the old public square used to.
Can put it many ways.
No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
[0] https://reason.com/volokh/2021/07/09/the-first-amendment-and...
* The California state constitution granted a broader right than the US constitution, and the speech in question was required to be permitted under California, but not US, rules.
* The speech in question was admitted by both parties to not reflect upon the shopping center's views, nor was the speech disruptive to its activities. Thus, freedom of association isn't going to kick in.
That last part in particular is key. For social media platforms, it is DEFINITELY the case that the content they host is imputed onto their own views. Alternative sites like Parler or Gab are invariably referred to with a note that they host predominantly far-right content--these sites are known almost entirely by what they carry, not the principles the sites claim to espouse. Even for larger sites like YouTube or Facebook, the ability to find certain kinds of negative content on these sites periodically blows up into major media furors.
A more appropriate precedent is Miami Herald v Tornillo, which held that a Florida state law requiring newspapers to publish candidate replies to articles was unconstitutional.
its just another example of "soft language" https://youtu.be/-m-zHjZ011I
Everything after the comma in that sentence is actually the entire point of why §230 was passed; prior case law held that YouTube would be liable for all content if it did the barest amount of moderation.
You do raise an interesting point though. Historically, the production & distribution of content intended for mass consumption was expensive, often requiring entire teams to collaborate. The mere existence of a piece of content was subject to filtering, from conception to production to distribution. Most of this filtering was invisible and possibly unconscious, intrinsic to the moral norms of society at large.
The Internet changed that. Content creation and distribution costs have cratered. A solo creator can spam hours of content every week. We are drowning in a quantity and variety of content unimaginable 30 years ago. Media distribution organisations now rely on soft distribution shaping ('boosting' / 'deboosting') and are starting to craft explicit censorship policies. It is very unclear how this will all play out in the long term, though I would caution that explicit legalism can only go so far.
There is nothing credible about anti-vax. Not a single thing.
Opinions of the uninformed are worthless. I have yet to speak with a single anti vaxxer who did research and not “research” on the subject (that is did clinical trials or even is able to read an abstract of one). I will repeat it again: if anyone ever finds an actual problem with a vaccine safety study I will personally drop everything and go help them get this information in front of the FDA, the CDC, and the media. Not a single person has taken me up on this offer yet.
How about the pioneer of mRNA vaccines? [1] [2]
[1]: https://thehighwire.com/videos/mrna-vaccine-inventor-calls-f...
[2]: https://news.yahoo.com/single-most-qualified-mrna-expert-173...
> With another researcher, Malone successfully proposed to the publishers of Frontiers in Pharmacology a special issue featuring early observational studies on existing medication used in the treatment of COVID-19, for which they recruited other guest editors, contributors, and reviewers. The journal rejected two of the papers selected: one on famotidine co-authored by Malone and another submitted by physician Pierre Kory on the use of ivermectin.[21] The publisher rejected the ivermectin paper due to what it claimed were “a series of strong, unsupported claims” which they determined did “not offer an objective nor balanced scientific contribution.”[21] Malone and most other guest editors resigned in protest in April 2021, and the special issue has been pulled from the journal's website.[21]
> Malone was criticized for falsely claiming that the FDA had not granted full approval to the Pfizer vaccine in August 2021.
From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._Malone
Sounds to me like he took a hard right turn at some point, and had a conflict of interest besides. Am I missing something?
What happens when something you care about is being censored, are you going to go through the effort of recreating YouTube just to share a video?
Sometimes it’s about agenda, but more often than not, it’s about ad revenue and shielding themselves from risk.
This is more about spending themselves from risk because YouTube has been getting a lot of flack for actively spreading misinformation with their recommendation engine, which goes beyond merely hosting it.
If Google REALLY had an agenda, why did they let their recommendation engine push these videos while millions of people around the world died?
The truth is Internet media companies chose to profit from the engagement that misinformation was providing.
All of this censorship you see today is a big meaningless public relations show.
Conglomerates don’t care about free speech and they definitely don’t care about misinformation.
They care about revenue.
popular != true
My main point is they’re not doing this out of some agenda. They’re doing this to deflect that their algorithms PROMOTED misinformation via their recommendation engine.
That’s a step beyond hosting content.
Honestly, this PR strategy is working too. Look at how many dopes are arguing whether YouTube should or shouldn’t censor their content.
Allowing this garbage to be spread has been massively, incredibly negligent and reckless, and has caused many, many avoidable deaths.